What is Patriotism?

OHCE State Leader LessonClarion Convention Center

July14, 2008Prepared by:

Debra Stevenson, OHCE Military Project ChairmanGloria King. FCS Program Specialist, SW District OCES

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Patriotism DefinedPatriotism is a love of and loyalty to one's country. A patriot

is someone who loves, supports, and is prepared to serve their country.

The word patriotism comes from a Greek word meaning fatherland. For most of history, love of fatherland or homeland was an attachment to the physical features of the land. But that notion changed in the eighteenth century, when the ideals of democracy, socialism, and communism strongly emerged into political thought.

Patriotism was still a love of one's country that included connections to the land and people, but then also included its customs and traditions, pride in its history, and devotion to its welfare.

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Today most people agree that patriotism also involves service to their country, but many disagree on how to best perform such service.

Some believe that the national government speaks for a country; therefore, all its citizens should actively support government policies and actions. Others argue that a true patriot speaks out when convinced that their country is following an unwise or unjust action.   http://www.reacheverychild.com/feature/patriotic.html

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Our hearts where they rocked our cradle,Our love where we spent our toil,

And our faith, and our hope, and our honor,We pledge to our native soil.

God gave all men all earth to love,But since our hearts are small,

Ordained for each one spot should proveBeloved over all.

~Rudyard Kipling

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Any one who loves and respects their country is a patriot. Patriotism Is not reserved for any one country.

This poem by Rudyard Kipling describes every man’s love for his country of birth.

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Defining Patriotism• Men love their country, not because it is great,

but because it is their own. ~ Seneca

• Every person has a great love for their country of origin.

• Since we are living in America we will focus on what Patriotism means to Americans.

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This has been a challenging lesson for both Debra and I. We spent many hours searching and researching for the lesson. We actually had fun doing it and we learned a lot about our country and about patriotism.

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Patriotic Symbols

Patriotism is demonstrated through varioussymbols in our culture.

The FlagThe Pledge of AllegianceNational AnthemPatriotic Images

The creation of many of these symbols centeredaround a time of distress for our country.

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In an effort to explore patriotism in America we will learn about various symbols of patriotism and how they came into use.

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The History of our FlagNo one knows with absolute certainty who designed the first stars and stripes or who made it. Congressman Francis Hopkinson seems most likely to have designed it, and few historians believe that Betsy Ross, a Philadelphia seamstress, made the first one.

Until the Executive Order of June 24, 1912, neither the order of the stars nor the proportions of the flag was prescribed. Consequently, flags dating before this period sometimes show unusual arrangements of the stars and odd proportions, these features being left to the discretion of the flag maker.

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In general, however, straight rows of stars and proportions similar to those later adopted officially were used.

Francis Hopkinson was a popular patriot, a Congressman from New Jersey, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, poet, artist, and distinguished civil servant. He almost certainly was the person who designed the first Stars and Stripes.

He was appointed to the Continental Navy Board on November 6, 1776. It was while serving on the Continental Navy Board that he turned his attention to designing the flag of the United States.

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Legend of Betsy RossGeorge Washington was a frequent visitor to the home of

Mrs. Ross before receiving command of the army. She embroidered his shirt ruffles and did many other things for him. He knew her skill with a needle. Now the General of the Continental Army, George Washington appeared on Mrs. Ross's doorstep around the first of June, 1776, with two representatives of Congress, Colonel Ross and Robert Morris. They asked that she make a flag according to a rough drawing they carried with them. At Mrs. Ross's suggestion, Washington redrew the flag design in pencil in her back parlor to employ stars of five points instead of six. ("Her version" of the flag for the new republic was not used until six years later.)

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The story has enormous popularity, yet the facts do not substantiate it.

This account of the creation of our first flag was first brought to light in 1870 by one of her grandsons, William J. Canby, at a meeting of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. This took place 94 years after the event supposedly took place! Mr. Canby was a boy of eleven years when Mrs. Ross died in his home. In the days of Betsy Ross we did not have the benefit of a frenetic press corps to witness, probe, and record the events of the day. Careful historians do not accept the legend and neither should we. At the same time, there often seems to be a wistful regret, best expressed, perhaps, by President Woodrow Wilson when asked his opinion of the story. He replied, "Would that it were true!"

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On June 14, 1777, in order to establish anofficial flag for the new nation, the Continental Congress passed the first Flag Act:

"Resolved, That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation."

The Flag Act

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Act of April 4, 1818 - provided for 13 stripes and one star for each state, to be added to the flag on the 4th of July following the admission of each new state, signed by President Monroe.

Executive Order of President Taft dated June 24, 1912 - established proportions of the flag and provided for arrangement of the stars in six horizontal rows of eight each, a single point of each star to be upward.

Executive Order of President Eisenhower dated January 3, 1959 - provided for the arrangement of the stars in seven rows of seven stars each, staggered horizontally and vertically.

Executive Order of President Eisenhower dated August 21, 1959 - provided for the arrangement of the stars in nine rows of stars staggered horizon tally and eleven rows of stars staggered vertically.

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"OLD GLORY!"

• The term was coined by Captain William Driver, a shipmaster of Massachusetts, in 1831. As he was leaving on one of his many voyages - some friends presented him with a beautiful flag of twenty four stars.

• As the banner opened to the ocean breeze for the first time, he exclaimed "Old Glory!"

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Captain Driver retired to Nashville in 1837, taking his treasured flag from his sea days with him.

By the time the Civil War erupted, most everyone in and around Nashville recognized Captain Driver's "Old Glory." When Tennessee seceded from the Union, Rebels were determined to destroy his flag, but repeated searches revealed no trace of the hated banner.

Then on February 25th, 1862, Union forces captured Nashville and raised the American flag over the capital. It was a rather small ensign and immediately folks began asking Captain Driver if "Old Glory" still existed. Happy to have soldiers with him this time, Captain Driver went home and began ripping at the seams of his bedcover. As the stitches holding the quilt-top to the batting unraveled, the onlookers peered inside and saw the 24-starred original "Old Glory"!

Captain Driver gently gathered up the flag and returned with the soldiers to the capitol. Though he was sixty years old, the Captain climbed up to the tower to replace the smaller banner with his beloved flag. The Sixth Ohio Regiment cheered and saluted - and later adopted the nickname "Old Glory" as their own, telling and re-telling the story of Captain Driver's devotion to the flag we honor yet today.

Captain Driver's grave is located in the old Nashville City Cemetery, and is one of three (3) places authorized by act of Congress where the Flag of the United States may be flown 24 hours a day. Calvin Coolidge was president of the US from 1923 to 1929. These were his thoughts on our flag and patriotic duty.

For your reference we have provided each of you with a flag booklet that describes proper etiquette when viewing or displaying the flag.

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Rights and Dutiesby Calvin Coolidge

• We do honor to the stars and stripes as the emblem of our country and the symbol of all that our patriotism means.

• We identify the flag with almost everything we hold dear on earth. It represents our peace and security, our civil and political liberty, our freedom of religious worship, our family, our friends, our home. We see it in the great multitude of blessings, of rights and privileges that make up our country.

• But when we look at our flag and behold it emblazoned with all our rights, we must remember that it is equally a symbol of our duties. Every glory that we associate with it is the result of duty done. A yearly contemplation of our flag strengthens and purifies the national conscience.

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Calvin Coolidge was president of the US from 1923 to 1929. These were his thoughts on our flag and patriotic duty.

For your reference we have provided each of you with a flag booklet that describes proper etiquette when viewing or displaying the flag.

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The National Anthem• On the evening of September 13, 1814, the

British bombardment of Fort McHenry began; the flag was ready to meet the enemy. The bombing continued for 25 hours before daylight.

• In the predawn darkness, Key waited for the sight that would end his anxiety; the joyous sight of the great flag blowing in the breeze.

• When at last daylight came, the flag was still there.

Proper etiquette for the National Anthem: Stand at attention, place your hand over your heart while the song is being sung or music played. Face the flag if present, if not face the music.

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Francis Scott Key was a respected young lawyer living in Georgetown. At the time, Georgetown was a thriving town of 5,000 people just a few miles from the Capitol, the White House, and the Federal buildings of Washington.

After war broke out in 1812 all was not tranquil in Georgetown. The British had entered Chesapeake Bay on August 19th, 1814, and by the evening of the 24th of August, the British had invaded and captured Washington. They set fire to the Capitol and the White House, the flames visible 40 miles away in Baltimore.

In the days following the attack on Washington, the American forces prepared for the assault on Baltimore.. Word soon reached Francis Scott Key that the British had carried off an elderly and much loved town physician. The townsfolk feared that Dr. Beanes would be hanged. They asked Key for his help, and he agreed, and arranged to have Col. John Skinner, an American agent for prisoner exchange to accompany him.

Key and Col. Skinner set sail from Baltimore flying a flag of truce approved by President Madison. On the 7th they found and boarded the ship to confer with Gen. Ross and Adm. Alexander Cochrane. At first they refused to release the doctor. But Key and Skinner produced a pouch of letters written by wounded British prisoners praising the care they were receiving from the Americans, among them Dr. Beanes. The British officers relented but would not release the three Americans immediately because they had seen and heard too much of the preparations for the attack on Baltimore. They were placed under guard and forced to wait out the battle behind the British fleet.

Now let's go back to the summer of 1813 for a moment. At the star-shaped Fort McHenry, the commander, Maj. George Armistead, asked for a flag so big that "the British would have no trouble seeing it from a distance". Two officers, a Commodore and a General, were sent to the Baltimore home of Mary Young Pickersgill, a "maker of colors," and commissioned the flag. Mary and her daughter Caroline, working in an upstairs front bedroom, used 400 yards of best quality wool bunting. They cut 15 stars that measured two feet from point to point. Eight red and seven white stripes, each two feet wide, were cut. Laying out the material on the brewery floor of a neighborhood brewery, the flag was sewn together. By August it was finished. It measured 30 by 42 feet and cost $405.90. The Baltimore Flag House, a museum, now occupies her premises, which were restored in 1953.

Being an amateur poet and having been so uniquely inspired, Key began to write on the back of a letter he had in his pocket. Sailing back to Baltimore he composed more lines and in his lodgings at the Indian Queen Hotel he finished the poem. In October a Baltimore actor sang Key's new song in a public performance and called it "The Star-Spangled Banner". Immediately popular, it remained just one of several patriotic airs until it was finally adopted as our national anthem on March 3, 1931. But the actual words were not included in the legal documents. Key himself had written several versions with slight variations so discrepancies in the exact wording still occur.

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Arlington National Cemetery

On a Virginia hillside rising above the Potomac River and overlooking Washington, D.C., stands Arlington House. The 19th-century mansion seems out of place amid the more than 250,000 military grave sites that stretch out around it. Yet, when construction began in 1802, the estate was not intended to be a national cemetery.

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Robert E. Lee and his wife, Mary Anna, lived at Arlington House until 1861, when Virginia ratified an alliance with the Confederacy and seceded from the Union.Lee, who had been named a major general for the Virginia military forces in April 1861.

Arlington National Cemetery was established by Brig. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, who commanded the garrison at Arlington House, appropriated the grounds June 15, 1864, for use as a military cemetery. His intention was to render the house uninhabitable should the Lee family ever attempt to return.

A stone and masonry burial vault in the rose garden, 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep, and containing the remains of 1,800 Bull Run casualties, was among the first monuments to Union dead erected under Meigs' orders.

Meigs himself was later buried within 100 yards of Arlington House with his wife, father and son; the final statement to his original order.

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The Service Flag is an official banner authorized by the Department of Defense for display by families who have members serving in the Armed Forces during any period of war or hostilities the United States may be engaged in for the duration of such hostilities.

The history of the Service Flag is as patriotic and touching as the symbolism each star represents to the families that display them.

The service flag was designed and patented by World War I Army Captain Robert L. Queissner of the 5th Ohio Infantry who had two sons serving on the front line. The flag quickly became the unofficial symbol of a child in service.

President Wilson became part of its history when in 1918 he approved a suggestion made by the Women's Committee of the Council of National Defenses that mothers who had lost a child serving in the war to wear a gold gilt star on the traditional black mourning arm band.

Blue and Gold Star Mothers

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This led to the tradition to cover the blue star with a gold star on the Service flag to indicate that the service member has died or been killed.

The color of the stars is also symbolic in that the blue star represents hope and pride and the gold star represents sacrifice to the cause of liberty and support for those who serve our Nation in uniform.

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Service BannerA Blue Star Service Banner displayed

in the window of a home is an American tradition. The banner lets others know that someone in the home is proudly serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

As Americans do their best to support Operation Iraqi Freedom and the ongoing war on terror, the Blue Star Service Banner tradition reminds us all that war touches every neighborhood in our land.

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Are any of you familiar with the Service Banner? We have included a printable version on the CD for any family who would like to have this to display.

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Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag

I pledge allegiance to the Flagof the United States of Americaand to the Republic for which it stands,one nation under God, indivisible,With liberty and justice for all.

Proper etiquette for saying the pledge: Stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. Men remove hats and with their right hand hold it at the left shoulder with the being over the heart. Learn to say the pledge without pausing between the words “Nation” and “under”. If the Flag isn’t available face the east while repeating the pledge.

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The original Pledge of Allegiance"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands- one nation indivisible-with liberty and justice for all."

In 1892, the Boston based "The Youth's Companion" magazine published a few words for students to repeat on Columbus Day that year. Written by Francis Bellamy, the circulation manager, and reprinted on thousands of leaflets, was sent out to public schools across the country.

On October 12, 1892, the quadri-centennial of Columbus' arrival, more than 12 million children recited the Pledge of Allegiance, thus beginning a required school-day ritual.

At the first National Flag Conference in Washington D.C., on June14, 1923, a change was made. For clarity, the words "the Flag of the United States" replaced "my flag". In the following years various other changes were suggested but were never formally adopted.

It was not until 1942 that Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance.

One year later, in June 1943, the Supreme Court ruled that school children could not be forced to recite it. In fact, today only half of our fifty states have laws that encourage the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom!

In June of 1954 an amendment was made to add the words "under God". Then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower said "In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war."

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Before the U.S. entered World War II, companies already had contracts with the government to produce war equipment for the Allies. The U.S. entered the war and war production had to increase dramatically in a short amount of time. Factories were converted to build airplanes, shipyards expanded and all these facilities needed workers.

Working was not new to women. However, the cultural division of labor by sex placed white middle-class women in the home and men in the workforce. Also, because of high unemployment during the Depression, most people were against women working because they saw it as women taking jobs from unemployed men.

The start of WW II tested these ideas.

Rosie the Riveter

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Everyone agreed that workers were needed. They also agreed that having women work in the industries would only be temporary. The government had to overcome these challenges in order to recruit women to the workforce. They promoted the fictional character of “Rosie the Riveter” as the ideal woman worker: loyal, efficient, patriotic, and pretty. Norman Rockwell’s image on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943 was the first widely publicized pictorial representation of the new “Rosie the Riveter”.

I have spoken with several members of OHCE that worked in factories during WWII.

Some symbols came into being to promote the war effort during World War II. There has been a recent resurgence of the use of “Rosie” for other types of advertising aimed at the female population.

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• The exact origins of Uncle Sam are unknown. But the most widely accepted theory is that Uncle Sam was named after Samuel Wilson.

• During the War of 1812, Samuel Wilson was a businessman from New York that supplied the Army with beef in barrels. The barrels were labeled "U.S.“

• When asked what the initials stood for, one of Wilson's workers said it stood for Uncle Sam Wilson. The suggestion that the meat shipments came from "Uncle Sam" led to the idea that Uncle Sam symbolized the Federal Government and association stuck.

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The most famous picture of Uncle Sam appeared on an Army recruiting poster. The poster was designed in World War I, and was used again in World War II. The caption reads "I Want You for U.S. Army." James Montgomery Flagg drew this picture, and served as the model too.

In 1961, Congress passed a resolution that recognized Samuel Wilson as the inspiration for the symbol Uncle Sam.

Sam Wilson looked nothing like the Uncle Sam pictured above. Uncle Sam's traditional appearance, with a white goatee and star-spangled suit, is an invention of artists and political cartoonists. One of these political cartoonists was named Thomas Nast. Nast produced many of the earliest cartoons of Uncle Sam.

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OHCE and Patriotism

I think Patriotism is like charity –it begins at home.

• Henry James 1843-1916, American AuthorIn Your Home:Read and learn the facts contained in this handout.Practice folding, saluting and pledging allegiance to the Flag. See that your Flag is clean, in good repair, and has a safe place for storage.Display your Flag properly at your home on the days when it should be displayed.

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What can we do to ensure a sense of patriotism remains steadfast?

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